Flexible-fuel vehicles also get flexible gas mileage

July 25, 2014

I enjoyed Warren Brown’s car review of the Chrysler 300 [“It’s more ‘get out of my way’ then get up and go,” Sports, July 20], but I noted that he stated the 300’s fuel economy as “19 miles per gallon in the city and 31 miles per gallon on the highway, using regular or E85 (85 percent ethanol) gasoline.” Although the 300 can operate on E85 if it is equipped as a “flex fuel” vehicle, it cannot get the same mileage that way as it does using regular gasoline because the energy content of ethanol is only about 67 percent of the fuel used by the Environmental Protection Agency to test fuel economy.